Torrent site crippled by anonymous DDoS attack

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. A DDoS attack will attempt to disrupt any online service making the website not available because of the overwhelming traffic coming from different sources. DDoS attack can happen on any website, chat application, and games. Usually, the attacker targets businesses and important resources that offer services, like government websites, news or bank websites.

A recent DDoS attacked crippled a famous torrent site Kickass. Unknown hackers attacked the site to disrupt its service. The attack happened last Saturday. Kickass gained reputation with its distribution of popular torrent titles that promote freedom of entertainment, which others name as Piracy. The purpose of this article is not however to discuss the legibility of torrent sites, but rather to talk about DDoS attacks, so let’s move on.

Today, KAT.cr is one of the leading torrent portals, listed as one of the top 100 sites in Alexa. The main scope of the attackers is to disrupt its services. The DDoS attackers might be jealous or bribed by legal digital content producers that want to take the site down due to piracy. The attackers might want to get a DDoS attack ransom from the site owner because this kind of attack portrays the role of a constant threat, which can be frequently scheduled.

Aside from huge network traffic, KAT.cr gets its revenue from huge advertisements popping around their site. The attacker targeted the DNS server and launched the attack. Both the the official domain and proxy domain were crippled. The portal was pounded by a milder DDoS attack two weeks ago. The support group of Kickass was able to restore the website and register the attacks. Unfortunately, the attackers were not yet identified.

The torrent site is now up but it will never be safe for future DDoS attack. The only hope we can get here is their hosting will improve on DDoS attacks protection.

Europol did make an official statement earlier this week, about the capture of the news-maker DD4BC. It is a group of DDoS extortionists that is based in Herzegovina and Bosnia. Apparently, their operation mode was to ask ransom payments. One of their favorite way currencies was the untraceable Bitcoins.

Last November, a notorious DDoS attacker was able to crack down an encrypted email provider ProtonMail and demanded the total sum of $6000 for them to stop targeting their servers. The company paid the ransom money and the crooks tricked them. The attackers didn’t stop attacking their servers making the company loose more of its investment funds.

Any ideas or tips on how we can make our website safe from this threat?